Days of Air and Darkness by Katharine Kerr

Author:Katharine Kerr
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780307573339
Publisher: San Val
Published: 1994-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Through the silver world of Elemental Air, Evandar’s army rode in utter silence. Their horses’ hooves made no sound; the men were too frightened to speak. All round, cumulus clouds drifted by, towering over them, casting vast shadows. Every now and then, two clouds would part to reveal a sudden long view of a white sea—a fog below, spreading out to the horizon, gleaming under a sun that had never shone in an earthly sky. During the ride, Evandar noticed his brother growing more and more restless, turning in the saddle, looking round him with wild eyes, tossing up his head, laying his free hand on the hilt of his sword. At last, Shaetano could stand the silence no longer.

“This is useless! We could be lost here forever. Even if they are here, we’ll never find them.”

“Indeed?” Evandar said. “Look there.”

Out across the sea of fog, an island lay in view, rising dark gray and craggy. Round it thunderheads piled and darkened, while lightning flashed like scythe blades. Evandar raised his horn and blew, collecting his drifting army.

“To the isle! To the isle!”

With a whoop, he kicked his horse to a gallop and plunged off the road into the sea—or upon it, because the horses traveled on its surface like a road. Clattering and shouting, the army swept across the gray—then suddenly slowed to a walk that grew slower yet, as their horses suddenly staggered. Under them, the cloud-road billowed and swelled as if it were a linen sheet, shaken out by a servant over a bed. For a moment they hung suspended in midair, trapped by the moving ground.

Evandar raised one hand and sang an incantation in the name of the Lords of Air. All at once, a marble bridge appeared under the horses’ hooves. With a clatter more deafening than thunder, the army galloped again, charging toward the isle.

“They’re here, sure enough!” Evandar yelled over the din.

Shaetano bit his lip as if to suppress a curse. Menw grinned and drew his sword with a flourish. At the signal, the rest of the army did the same with a flash like lightning as their horses clattered off the bridge and onto the dark gray sand of the island’s beach. When Evandar glanced up, he saw, drifting far overhead, the tiny shape of a bird.

“Look there, brother,” Evandar said. “Think that’s Alshandra?”

“What? I don’t see anything.”

“You don’t, eh? No matter.”

Ahead, a silver billow of hill rose, its flanks streaming pale mist. Perched at the summit a castle loomed, not the conjoined brochs of Deverry, round and towering inside a proper dun, but a strange edifice, built square, with sharp corners to its walls, and the only towers were peculiar skinny ones, perched on top of the big square palace inside or clinging to the edges of its pointed roofs.

“Pitiful,” Evandar sighed. “Absolutely pitiful.”

He waved his hand once in the air and summoned a gale. Slamming into the walls, pounding at the towers, it blew the castle into shreds and whirled the chunks away.

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